


Breathe in, Breathe Out

by ElotheFairy



Series: K Project One Shots/Short Stories 2020-2022 [2]
Category: K (Anime), K Project
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Aftermath of Violence, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, aftermath of abuse, side character OC but he's only mentioned for two seconds, sometimes i just write angsty pain stuff cause idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:48:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28973079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElotheFairy/pseuds/ElotheFairy
Summary: Angsty hurt/comfort banshou one shot. Bando tries to heal Akagi's wounds.
Relationships: Akagi Shouhei/Bandou Saburouta
Series: K Project One Shots/Short Stories 2020-2022 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643458





	Breathe in, Breathe Out

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This one shot was originally written sometime in Nov. of 2020. I don't remember exactly when. Idk yall apparently I write angst when I'm upset lmao. Warnings for this specific one shot down below:
> 
> Story Warnings:  
> -This one shot focuses on the aftermath of a character's traumatic experience with domestic violence. Read at your own discretion.  
> -mention of cuts (on face, neck, and collarbone), blood, scrapes, bruises, one instance of a burn mark on another character.  
> -mention of a character being cornered in a kitchen and attacked.  
> -In no way am I trying to romanticize domestic violence, this is mostly just something angsty I wrote when I was feeling like shit one night, so just keep that in mind.
> 
> *if you would still like to read the story but just not read about the retelling of the domestic attack, read up until the character says "It was so sudden-" and pick up again after the line "Does he know you came here?"
> 
> Enjoy~

Angsty Banshou one shot: written sometime around Nov. of 2020

It was late. The kind of night that had bones chilling and teeth chattering in just a few short seconds. Bando saw the steps leading up to his second floor walk up apartment and almost cried in relief. He tugged the folds of his jacket tighter to his chest and finally reached the steps. He breathed a shallow sigh of relief once warm air greeted him. He was inside. He hurried up the narrow set of stairs, unlocked his door, and went straight into the cozy apartment that awaited him. It was only a few moments after he was fully settled in, watching his favorite tv show, that he heard it. A soft knock came from the other side of the door. 

His forehead creased in annoyance and confusion. He had just gotten done with a late clan meeting. It was almost midnight. Who was paying him a visit at this hour? Whoever it was, Bando didn’t think they were there for any positive reason. He slowly got up from the couch and crept towards the door. These were the times where Bando always felt unnecessarily paranoid. Was it a robber? A murderer, maybe? He rolled his eyes at his own racing thoughts, and willed himself to look through the peephole. 

It was Akagi. Or, at least, he assumed it was. The person’s head was bent down so much that Bando couldn’t really see his face. 

“Akagi, that you?”

“Yeah San-chan. Would you mind letting me in?”

Bando could just _feel_ something was wrong. His friend’s voice was a lot more hoarse. Ragged, almost. He swung the door open without a moment’s hesitation and Akagi stepped across the threshold. He paced over to the living room area. 

“Bando…”

The moment Akagi spoke his full name was the moment Bando knew for sure that something was _very_ wrong. He also noted that Akagi was still fully turned away from him.

“Something happened.”

“What? What happened?”  


He was getting impatient now. Akagi was making him very worried. 

“Dude, you gotta talk to me,” he said this, walking over to his best friend. “-please just turn around, dammit-” he was now reaching, grabbing one of Akagi’s shoulders and gently swiveling him around. 

Akagi let him. And Bando’s heart dropped into his stomach. 

His best friend was covered in scrapes, bruises, and cuts all across his face, throat, and collarbone. The pupils in his brown eyes were dilated in fear. His nose was bleeding, and Bando now noticed that the blood had also dripped down onto his shirt. He was a goddamn mess. 

“Oh-oh my god,” he managed to stutter out. 

Akagi just stood there, still shivering from the cold outside. Probably from fear as well. He looked like he’d rather die than start talking. 

“What happened? Who did this to you?”

Still no answer.

Bando realized that Akagi must be in a deeply traumatized state to have gone momentarily nonverbal. 

“Okay, it’s okay. We’ll figure out that part later.”

From that point on, Bando took it upon himself to take care of Akagi that night.

There was still fear in his friend’s eyes, so he took a more gentle approach. “How ‘bout if I clean you up, yeah?”

Akagi nodded silently. 

He slowly and carefully guided Akagi to the bathroom, where he slowly and carefully washed the blood from Akagi’s scrapes and cuts. The movements were methodical, but Bando tried to instill a sense of unspoken warmth and security with every washing of each cut, of each scrape. He then disinfected his wounds. Akagi winced slightly, but relaxed his posture a bit more once Bando was finished. 

“I probably need to check your chest and back for any wounds. Is it okay if I remove your shirt?”  


Akagi nodded once more. 

Bandou slowly lifted Akagi’s shirt up over his head, taking Akagi’s hat off in the process. Thankfully there didn’t seem to be any serious wounds. Nothing needed to be disinfected on this part of his body, but he gritted his teeth when he saw bruises blossoming on the sides of his torso. What fucking _maniac_ had done this to his best friend?? It was absolutely enraging. 

But he told himself that he needed to calm down. For Akagi’s sake, if not his own. Running out his door to go on a violent rampage wasn’t going to make Akagi feel any less traumatized. So he took a short breath in and out, opting for peace tonight.  


“Good news,” he said softly. “You won’t need stitches. At least not on your face anyways.”  


He dressed Akagi in one of his clean t shirts and led him back to the couch. He sat him down, and fetched him a glass of water. And then he wrapped a fuzzy throw blanket around his shoulders. 

“We don’t have to talk about it tonight if it’s too much,” Bando said hesitantly. 

He was about to reach over and grab the remote to his tv to unpause the show he was previously watching, but at that same moment, Akagi finally spoke.

“San-chan…”

Bando quickly turned off the tv and looked over at his friend. 

“Jiro did this to me.”

_“What?”_ the word came out a lot sharper and more venomous than he meant it to be. 

“It was s-so sudden. We were having an argument in the kitchen... He wanted me to take the month off and go with him on this stupid cruise. Of course I told him no, that I had to stay in the city because my job required me to-” Akagi was speaking pretty rapidly now- “and that if he wanted company he should just invite the other guy he was screwing behind my back.”

Bando heard Akagi’s breathing pick up to a quicker pace. “I didn’t mean to say that last bit out loud, but it just came out. And he snapped. Lunged at me with a dinner knife and went to town. He was screaming at me, telling me to shut the fuck up and to take back what I had said.”

Bando’s breathing stopped. He was definitely seeing red now. 

“He had me backed up against a corner. Punching me, kicking me, cutting me…” Akagi’s lip quivered. “I finally came to my senses and used our clan powers and burned part of his face to get him the hell away from me. And then I came here.”

Bando could feel the blood starting to roar in his ears, but he forced himself to remain calm. Well maybe not calm, but close enough. 

“Does he know you came here?”

Akagi shook his head. “No, I never told him that, and I never yet introduced you to him, so..”  


Bando nodded. “Okay. Well, you should be safe now. You can crash here for as long as you need to.” His voice turned into something hushed, furious, but also desperate. “I won’t let him hurt you.”  


Akagi’s eyes welled up with a kind of warm sadness and appreciation that Bando had never seen before. “Thank you, San-chan. For helping me.”

Bile went up in the back of Bando’s throat. “Seriously, don’t mention it. It was the absolute least I could do.” 

He chewed on lip for a couple seconds, looking out the window. Was Akagi really so emotionally fucked up right now that he couldn’t see what the bare minimum was? Bando would’ve punched any friend who was in his place if they had done _less_ than what he did. 

The side of Akagi’s lip twitched into a ghost of a smile. And then tears filled his eyes, threatening to overflow at any second. “I shouldn’t have said that last part to him. I shouldn’t have angered him.” 

“Now wait just a damn second.” Bando bit out the words harshly. “He _attacked_ you, remember? Provocation has nothing to do with it. I’m not letting you feel guilty about his revolting behavior.”

Bando held Akagi as he cried into his shoulder. He tried to soothe Akagi as much as he could by running his fingers through his shaggy auburn hair and whispering that things would be okay in the end, but knew that it was a futile gesture in the grand scheme of things. But it was what Akagi needed to hear, so he just said it. 

After a little bit, Bando suggested that Akagi should probably get some sleep. He had set up his extra futon on the floor of his bedroom for his friend. They talked for a bit about stupid Homra stuff that had happened earlier that week. Nothing important, but any topic was good enough to distract Akagi with. Something to make him laugh, get tired, and then eventually be lulled to sleep. 

Bando gave a deep sigh from where he was sitting on the floor, then got up to go to his respective bed. He turned off the lights and was about to pull the covers back and crawl into his own bed when he was stopped by Akagi’s voice again. 

“San-chan… could you sleep by me tonight? I can’t be alone right now.”

He didn’t think it was a good idea. His best friend was in a super vulnerable place right now. But he couldn’t seem to ever say no to Akagi, even in his strongest moments. And he wasn’t feeling too Herculean right now either. 

He turned back to look at Akagi. And slowly nodded. 

He knelt down, grabbed the top cover of the futon, and crawled in quietly next to Akagi. 

“San-chan?”  


“Yeah?”

“Please...hold me,” came the hoarse whisper from the other side of the futon. 

A heated blush crawled up from his neck to his cheeks, and through his entire face. His heart thudded in his chest. This wasn’t a good idea.

And yet his arms reached out to wrap around Akagi’s waist. Before he could even process what he was doing, his whole body scooted up against Akagi’s, his nose nuzzling the crook of Akagi’s neck. 

If he didn’t think about it, it actually felt very nice. Warm and soothing. And maybe even a bit beautiful. Everything felt foreign to him and yet he couldn’t feel help but feel like this was home. He was relieved that Akagi hadn’t backed away from him. Maybe Akagi thought this felt like home too. It seemed as if Akagi’s breath had already slowed into peaceful, untroubled breaths. 

A thick mist of tranquility washed over him, and the tiredness finally set in. 

The two boys’ breaths merged into one singular pattern as the wind finally dyed down, and their dreams overtook their realities.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Oh wow that one was a lot, even for me 😶  
> -if any of you are wondering if Bando does anything about Jiro: yes, I'd like to imagine that they get a restraining order or something against him and maybe a month later or so once Akagi feels better he and Bando go beat him up together lmaooo real hawt boi shit amirite xD idk that just seems like something they would do, according to some things that happen in the manga series lmao. I didn't wanna write that part tho cause it didn't feel like it fit that well with the rest of the story haha. Maybe another time tho. And of course Bando and Akagi would end up getting together later on down the road once Akagi's ready to date someone else xD  
> -I hope this story didn't come off as being dismissive of anything traumatic like this that does happen irl. I tried to make it as respectable but as believable and sincere as possible.
> 
> Anyways, I just love this ship yall. I feel like I get these characters on like a deep and personal level, so I reaaaally wanna try writing more one shots and fics for them, I love them a lot 🥺
> 
> I'm on tumblr if you wanna come screech about cute K Project or Naruto bois with me xD  
> Tumblr: @elo-kodon  
> https://elo-kodon.tumblr.com/
> 
> Here's a link if yalll wanted to join my K Project server on discord, Non-rp centric, we mostly just simp and have fun discussion and play bot games XD Manga blogging, fanart, and writing channels as well!:  
> https://discord.com/invite/D8AN3NaHuJ
> 
> Thanks for reading yall, leave me a kudos if you liked :)


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